Former lawmakers join campaign-finance fight

A bipartisan group of former members of Congress and ex-governors is banding together to put a new spin on a long-standing cause: reducing the influence of big money in American elections.

The ReFormers Caucus, as the group of more than 100 former officeholders is known, plans to kick off its effort Nov. 5 with an event on Capitol Hill. It’s all part of a push by a group called Issue One to put the spotlight on overhauling the system.

Goals include boosting small donations to campaigns, finding ways to restrict political contributions from lobbyists and unmasking secret contributions made to tax-exempt groups that are active in politics.

The boldfaced political names in the group range from former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman to Leon Panetta, a former California congressman who also ran the CIA and the Defense Department. Some, such as Daschle, have ties to the lobbying business themselves.

The rise of big money in politics means officeholders “are focusing their attention on the 1% and the problems of the 1%,” said Tim Roemer, a former Indiana congressman and ex-U.S. ambassador to India who is part of the new caucus. That undermines public confidence in government, he said.

Recent efforts to boost the power of small-dollar donors and require more disclosure of political spending have failed to gain any traction in Congress, where both chambers are controlled by Republicans. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is one of the nation’s leading opponents of campaign-finance restrictions.

The new caucus aims to demonstrate bipartisan support for change, said Nick Penniman, Issue One’s executive director. Republicans, including former Nebraska senator and ex-Defense secretary Chuck Hagel, former Indiana senator Dick Lugar and former Missouri senator John Danforth, make up about 30% of the new group.

“For too long, fixing our distorted campaign-finance system has been seen as a lefty issue, and a result has been summarily demoted and dismissed in Washington,” Penniman said. “We see it not as a lefty issue but as an American issue.”